On The Process Of Writing My Novel

One week ago I managed to find some time to work on my novel again. I took the start of “Part One” of it and tweaked and rewrote that to be more how I like it. I enjoyed doing that. I regularly make entries on here of ‘Goldilocks”, but I don't publish them, as “Goldilocks” is nowhere near finished, and, whenever it is, I feel sure that I'll go back and edit nearly everything that I've written of it so far, if I don't edit stuff beforehand. But I don't know why, but I think I will publish this one. I know nobody ever reads my blog and I have no time and not much interest at the moment in getting an audience to it. I need to research how to self publish a novel and publicise it if my work on my novel ever gets that far. I wonder if anyone would ever want to read any fiction book I’d written. Probably not, but I can’t know that for sure? I joined a writers circle decades ago when I was young - had to leave it, as it was full of antagonistic women - and the woman who run it said the characters in my stories were too unusual in outlook to be relatable to. Well, I think most people would have said that more than a bit of that applied to her, actually - and, her friends who came to the circle - but, from supportive people I've heard too, “I've never met anyone like you before”, and, I think my present characters are mostly little pieces of me.  I simply don't know.

I did do a websearch recently for trends in sapphic fiction. Because I don't even read sapphic fiction. And, I guess that doesn't bode that well, because generally, to write well you need to be a reader. I didn't manage to read that much of the search, or generally it was just so dry it went past me, but, one search result said that something called ice queens were popular love interests.  Hmmm, I can’t identify with that one. I'm used to random strangers I meet taking a strong dislike to me, and especially sapphics, and  I just accept it.  It's hard enough to actually feel anything about people in general without them being objectionable and cold as well. They could look sensationally attractive, and I’d just instantly give up. A lot of the novels seem to be about women meeting women in non chosen situations, (of course, I guess), and these women being impressive. Speaking now as a much older woman, whose romance days are long gone, I was never really interested in anyone I randomly  met when I was young, and I absolutely hated dating. How did “love” ever start for me? Being momentarily in a lot of need or peril. Literally collapsing into dramas due to my psychic senses in the course of my work. Instant connections occurring through international and class boundaries, not really caring much about the nitty gritty of their everyday life or mine, not really being grounded. No personal context.  As an astrologer, I would of course say that's because natally I have Vesta in Cancer and it's in trine to Neptune. Needing to be needed, or being needy to activate sexuality, against a background of numinous and past life issues to that. Nothing like those contexts. 

Ratings on how “spicy” they are. Hmmm yes fair enough but my novel is definitely instead about the thrills of romance as focuses. Plotless novels; oh yes absolutely, my “novel” is all about the scenes I’ve imagined over the years in the characters living the sort of lives I’d have liked to, and how to put those together, with is it possible? 

I don't want to read too much into what other people have written for fear that will adulterate and ruin the expression of my own voice.

My novel has never been realistic and I’ve always been comfortable with that. I remember in the 90s a writer friend, Gary McMahon, talking about reading porn fiction and it not mattering that the plots are ridiculous. Mine is like romance porn. Why not? Who gets to decide a context is ridiculous? I don't know many social milieaus, and as for the old adage “write what you know”, I don’t want to and nor do I probably really know it - where I live and am rooted. It's not glamorous or cozy. I’ve never known many places; the city I live in, my grandmother’s RIP ancestral village, very little else. My main characters, the love interests, are probably too good, too “angelic” to be believable. Could anyone actually keep up the degrees of devotion Stacey shows over so many years? For a while, yes, infatuation can have that affect, but for decades? 

Like so many women, I’m extremely unhappy in my life. I’m old, so don't have opportunities any more; I'm alone and have never been married; my dearest dreams were trashed by enemies, I'm a failure despite the hugest sacrifices and efforts I made over many years, and I live a daily, stressful grind of cold duty, not achieving anything much really and, naturally with what I've previously said here, with no happy memories to mentally fall back on as a comfort with all that. And I'm grieving and was deeply frustrated and hurt by that too - my baby stolen by a hospital and funeral parlour, me delegated to being an observer in her “care” in death, uninvolved as always. So it's such a comfort to escape into escapist fiction writing. The process of trying to write a novel is such a fun way to dream and create.

When I can, I hope to enjoy the next bit of writing; covering how one of the main characters is nursed so extremely sympathetically by one of the main love interests. Of what interest is sex, when there can be sympathy? Romance and deep pair bonding all the way …


 


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